


swallow your heart

by oculata



Series: Carbon and Dried Mangoes [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Developing Relationship, Jealous!Ian, Light Angst, M/M, Nonrelationship Relationship, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:14:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22862320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oculata/pseuds/oculata
Summary: Mickey and Ian are spending a lot of time together, but they haven't put a label on it quite yet.(College AU)
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Series: Carbon and Dried Mangoes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620751
Comments: 66
Kudos: 249





	1. foggy afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> i haven’t figured out exactly how many chapters this part is gonna be so i’m gonna have it set as 3 for the time being, but this is subject to change. anyway, part 2 let’s goooo
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_clennam)

“Amoebas don’t breathe.”

“No?”

“Well, I don’t think they do,” Ian amended, sounding more unsure with each syllable. His head was full of air, and his eyes felt like they were burning. He turned to look to the side, the rough fabric of the pillowcase crinkling underneath him, and when he was greeted by the image of Mickey’s socked feet, he continued talking as if they were his face. “How would they? They’re just these, like… amorphous blobs.”

Mickey wiggled his toes in thought. He stretched his arm as far as it could to pass the joint back to Ian. “I feel like they do, man.” 

“But _how_?” Ian pleaded to the universe, arm mechanically taking the joint and putting it to his lips. He didn’t even exhale the smoke—just let it trickle out of his mouth like a static smog.

“Didn’t you just learn about this shit?” Mickey asked, fingertips drawing lazy circles onto Ian’s knee.

“We were texting the whole time during that lab,” Ian reminded him.

Mickey chuckled, sounding far too pleased by the fact that their conversations were hindering his education. “Forgot about that.”

It was quiet for a few moments, and Mickey could feel himself almost drifting into sleep. There was a thick stillness in the room, and something about the feeling of Ian’s knee—skin running under his fingertips, the ridges of his prints slipping along as easy as ice—was right on the brink of being the most comforting feeling he’d ever experienced. He kept slowly tracing circular shapes with a hazy calculation, occasionally sliding his fingers under the fabric of Ian’s boxers to go up the smooth flesh of Ian’s inner thighs before moving back down to start the process again. His mind felt so even and collected that it poured into his physical being, too, making his usually tense shoulders feel so relaxed. Ian’s presence in that bed was just so meant to be slotted against his—it was all a beautiful, stoned harmony of gentle sensation and mental repose, and Mickey started to feel the stiffness in his neck fall away to sleep when Ian’s voice broke the quietude.

“I can’t stop thinking about this,” Ian blurted out, lifting himself up onto his elbows to look at the projecting features of Mickey’s face. He quickly extinguished the joint in the nightstand’s ashtray and started scanning the room. “Where’s my phone?”

Mickey’s eyebrows woke up by shooting up to crash into his hairline in startlement way before his eyelids fluttered back open. He thought on Ian's inquiry for a few seconds, picking apart the room in his head momentarily before the impression of a rectangle forced its way into his back.

“Think I’m layin’ on it,” Mickey said as he reached under himself, pulled it out, and tossed it gently over to Ian. He stayed still on his back for a few more seconds as Ian shuffled around in an indiscernible manner, eyes once again falling closed and mist settling into his ears when he felt a small tug on the front of his shirt pulling him up into a seated position.

“The fuck?” he rasped sleepily.

“I need you,” Ian began firmly, pointing his finger before thumping Mickey’s chest with a loopy grin, “to make sure I don’t get distracted and fall down a Wikipedia hole. I just wanna know how those little fuckers breathe.”

“Aight,” Mickey chuckled and scooted up a little so he could look down into Ian’s phone screen.

They paused for a few seconds, entranced by the intermittent existence of the blinking blue line in the search bar, seemingly waiting for the words in Ian’s head to manifest on the screen. Mickey found himself squinting at the white screen, trying to draw the letters in with tiny eye movements, getting frustrated that the keyboard wasn’t responding to Ian’s hovering thumbs.

“Hey,” Mickey alerted once he remembered how technology actually worked. The sudden sound, despite its softness in both tone and volume, startled Ian a bit. Right after the initial shock wore off, and the absurdity of the circumstance finally occurred to him, Ian began giggling uncontrollably, nearly dropping his phone into his lap multiple times.

“Christ, I’m high,” Ian remarked breathlessly. “How long did I zone out for?”

Mickey giggled and leaned over to press a kiss onto Ian’s blushing cheek. “For a little bit. It’s aight—I lost it for a sec, too.”

Ian watched with a wide grin as the other man settled back onto his bottom, eyes raking over Ian’s features through hooded lids with an intent that Ian’s nebulous mind couldn’t quite piece together but was welcoming regardless.

Ian blinked slowly a few times. “Maybe getting high right before I have to go to class wasn’t the smartest idea.”

“Not your best one,” Mickey teased with a simper. “Maybe you’ll sober up in…” He squinted at the top of Ian’s phone screen, chuckling hopelessly when he read the time. “Twenty minutes.”

“I could just not go.”

“Nah nah, man, you gotta go,” Mickey said with a sleepy conviction. “You missed lecture… what was it? Last week? And also one time the week before that. You gotta go ‘cause otherwise you’re gonna get behind real bad.”

“Hell yeah I’ll get behind,” Ian snickered and reached around Mickey to tap the man’s lower back.

“Shut the fuck up!” Mickey laughed, feeling his face warm pleasantly. “Go look up your weird fuckin’ blob things.”

“Oh! That’s right. Okay—how… do… amoebas… breathe. Tell me, Google,” Ian commanded the screen, shaking the phone with a slow, stoned vigor.

“Voice sounds so nice like this,” Mickey commented as they waited for the page to load, completely disregarding Ian’s plea to the search engine and wetting his bottom lip. Ian’s head slowly raised up to look at him, the high delaying the flush coming to his cheeks. Once it did, though, his pale skin reddened more and more by the seconds, and a shy, flattered smile crossed his face. They stared at each other for a long but easy moment, studying the lines that trailed from their eyes and the tiny blood vessels hidden under their skin, dumbstruck by how much they liked each other but also just how weird but _awesome_ it was to have another person—flesh, bones, and beating heart—sitting across from them.

Mickey blinked and jolted his head a bit as if some sort of switch had flipped in him. He slowly advanced on Ian until his mouth was over his ear, breathing gently against the shell of it before moving down to press a soft kiss onto the side of his neck. He kept one hand on the bed to stabilize himself and placed the other on the inside of Ian’s thigh, feeling how the fabric of the boxers quickly wound up. When he felt Ian’s body stiffen under him and heard his breathing hasten and become more ragged, he knew he was digging himself under Ian's skin. Mickey smirked and began gently running his hand up and down Ian’s thigh, feeling how the muscles tensed up under his touch before moving his lips back up to Ian’s ear.

“So how they breathe?” Mickey asked with his voice masked under his breath, words flowing over Ian’s ear in a way that sent a shiver down his back.

“Uhh,” Ian began elegantly with his voice cracking to hell, causing Mickey to chuckle. “It says that amoebas breathe _using_ —” Mickey slipped his hand into Ian’s boxers. “—u-using this porous cell membrane—fuck, that feels good.”

Mickey chuckled again and kept moving his hand slowly and methodically. “So they breathe usin’ that membrane thing?”

“Yeah,” Ian affirmed breathlessly, letting out a sharp, shuddered breath as Mickey’s grip on him tightened. His eyes lolled closed, and his jaw dropped open a little for his desperate breaths and soft moans. After a moment of him losing himself to the sensation of Mickey’s hand around him and the pleasant mistiness in his mind managing to heighten all of his perceptions and nerve endings, there was the gentle pressure of Mickey's lips pressing against his, and while he found himself chasing the sensation and taste of Mickey’s mouth, Mickey kept moving away from him, unwilling to allow Ian the level of contact he desired.

“How about movin’? How they get around?” Mickey wondered when he fully pulled off, watching how the other man gazed at him through half-hooded lids and how his breath desperately rushed in and out of his mouth.

“Really, Mick?” Ian pleaded, breath fluttering in his mouth as Mickey quickened his pace.

“Yeah, man,” he confirmed, a mischievous smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Basically missed that whole lab so you gotta catch up.”

“Fuck,” Ian breathed, trembling fingers flailing over his phone’s keyboard as he typed in Mickey’s question. “Acting like it’s not your fault that I wasn’t paying attention.”

“That’s why I’m helpin’ you out now,” Mickey responded. “So?”

“Fuck, okay, umm.” Ian’s voice was alternating between quivering and normalcy, but the teetering and instability in his tone was quickly dominating over any lingering evenness. “It says that they have these things called— _holy fuck_ —psuedopodia, and—”

“What’re those?”

Ian’s speech was becoming more frantic and needy. “I have no fucking clue, but they basically randomly stick out like an arm or something, and that’s how they move, and holy fuck, I really need to come right _fuck_ ing now, Mick.”

Mickey smiled widely before crashing his mouth onto Ian’s, quickening the pace of his hand just a touch more as he pulled Ian through his orgasm, the vibrations of Ian’s loud moans thrumming between their locked lips. The motion of his hand slowed, and their kiss softened as Ian’s emphatic moans faded into quiet whimpers. Eventually, Mickey pulled them apart with a soft pop, watching how Ian’s head instinctively bobbed back forward to try and catch his lips again. Mickey giggled and pressed one last soft kiss onto Ian’s lips before reaching for their tissues.

“Holy shit,” Ian declared suddenly as he practically fell back against the wall, head knocking against it with a solid thunk. Mickey laughed and settled down next to Ian, cupping his jaw while he pressed a kiss into his cheek. “Is that the hand that just had my come all over it?”

Mickey snickered against Ian’s cheek. “Maybe.”

“Asshole,” Ian said as he playfully nudged Mickey in the chest with his elbow. He turned his head to meet Mickey’s lips for a quick peck, but Christ, it was never quick with Mickey. Kissing him was addictive—the taste of his lips and the inside of his mouth was intoxicating, and Ian without fail got lost in how their tongues tangled together and how Mickey’s hands found the most wonderful ways to run along his skin and body, making his palms feel like they were melting into his flesh.

Ian’s phone buzzed against his leg, and as much as he wanted to ignore the responsibility that was quickly resurfacing in his mind so he could just keep kissing Mickey for minutes that turned into hours before taking a quick break to eat so they could kiss and touch each other some more, the sensation reminded him that classtime was approaching.

“Ugh, we should start heading over,” Ian sighed after lifting off of Mickey’s lips, slithering off the bed in search of his sweatpants.

Mickey grunted and followed Ian off the bed. With a slightly loopy gait, he went over to the dresser and opened his drawer in search of a pair of shorts. After they slipped on their shoes and had Ian’s backpack in tow, Ian opened the door for the other man and gave him a customary slap on the ass as he walked out.

“You wanna finish that joint later before we go to dinner?” Mickey asked as they hurriedly trotted down the steps of the dorm building.

“Yeah, we could. What do you wanna eat, though?”

Mickey pondered the question for a second as he pulled out a cigarette and rolled it between his fingers. “Pizza?”

“We had that on Tuesday, though,” Ian reminded him. They breezed through the quad and through the masses of students jittering about courses and various gossip as the cold, claggy air fixed itself to their skins and caused Mickey to silently curse himself for his poor clothing choice. The fog lowered, as well, and Mickey could feel the chill seeping in through his already too few layers. He couldn’t wait to get back to the dorm and change into one of Ian’s fleece pajama pants.

“There’s that new burger joint on Maple. Madison said their garlic fries are pretty good,” Mickey suggested.

“I like that—oh, wait, I have your lighter in these pants,” Ian informed when he saw Mickey roughly patting his pockets with a knit brow in search of it. They paused their trek momentarily so Ian could light the cigarette for him.

“You know when Daniel is comin’ back yet, or can I keep leavin’ my shit on his bed and desk?” Mickey asked.

“No,” Ian said, stealing the cigarette from Mickey’s lips to take a drag. “Sienna said that he’s enjoying the quiet of her apartment way too much—I think your loud ass scared him.”

“Shut the hell up. And give me that shit!” Mickey laughed as he reached out to snatch the cigarette back. They walked the rest of the way across campus until the unfortunate sight of Ian’s class’ building caught their eye, and the two men let out simultaneous sighs of annoyance as they ascended the steps. They kept chattering amongst themselves, Mickey badgering him about paying attention during lecture, and Ian making unconvincing promises about how he’d try to control the impulse to text the other man. They floated into the room, lingering in the doorway as their chuckles and jokes kept them magnetized together.

“Hey, there you are!” Lucia called out to Ian over the quiet hum of other students from her desk a few levels up in the grand lecture hall.

“Who the fuck’s that?” Mickey said with a scowl, squinting at the vague figure.

“That’s Lucia. She comes to basically all of your parties, Mick.” Mickey did not look convinced. “Come on, you can say hi to her,” Ian continued with an easy smile as he beckoned Mickey to follow him up the stairs.

“Did you finish the homework? I got stuck on number six and then just gave up on trying to do the rest,” she said quickly once the men were within earshot. “Hi, Mickey! Are you gonna join us in the suffering that is biology?”

Mickey scoff-laughed as he took in the miserable faces of the lecture hall, Ian’s included. “Fuck no. Get enough grief about it from this fucker as is,” he said, pointing at Ian with a gentle smile.

“That’s fair,” Lucia laughed and smoothed her hair. “Fuck, Ian, imagine if your boyfriend enrolled in this class. You wouldn’t get shit done.”

“Yeah, probably. Me and Mickey are just friends, though, but yeah,” Ian managed in between chuckles.

Though Lucia continued her polite tittering, there was a sudden leadening force coming from Ian’s side, plummeting down from the sky like a rock wall and crashing through the staircase until it reached the earth’s mantle. It was so sudden but so earthshaking and momentous that Ian felt his laugh catch in his throat, no longer able—or, rather, allowed—to reach his mouth. He uneasily turned his head towards the source of the tectonic force, the blood feeling oddly cool as it rushed under his skin, to see Mickey piercing him with a wounded look. Ian’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly, but Mickey stayed still as his reddening, glossy eyes stared into Ian’s face with a certain helplessness and hurt that Ian had never seen in anyone before.

“M—”

“You know,” Mickey said normally, forcing a sardonic smile onto his face. He turned down to Lucia, who was gawking at the situation with equal parts terror and fascination. “I’ve actually gotta go. Nice seein’ you, Lucia.” He gave her a curt wave and, without looking at Ian, spun around and smoothly withdrew from the room.

Lucia puffed up her cheeks with air and exhaled a long breath. “That’s not good.”

Ian watched intently, mentally begging for Mickey to turn around and come back to him, but Mickey’s form only got smaller and smaller before it eventually disappeared behind the wall.

“Shit. Fuck. Should I go after him?”

Lucia clicked her tongue as she considered the situation. “He seems really upset right now, so I wouldn’t. It might be better to just talk to him later.”

Ian nodded meekly and mechanically slid into the tight gap between the seats before dropping down next to his friend. He stared forward, all of the writing on the board converging into meaningless gibberish as he replayed the situation in his head. He and Mickey hadn’t said they were boyfriends, but in retrospect, Ian was feeling pretty stupid that he considered them anything but, especially since they spent essentially every waking moment together—from breakfast, to studying, to walking each other to class, to driving off campus to hangout, to falling asleep together tucked in Ian’s twin XL bed every night for weeks. Before he knew it, his forehead was slamming against his desk, and Lucia was letting out a strained noise of empathy.

The lecture was completely lost on him, all sound filtering out as he just replayed the situation over and over in his head, scrutinizing and finding himself on the verge of tears when he remembered how the devastation stung Mickey’s face.

Something on Ian’s desk caught his attention—his phone lighting up with the notification of a text.

 _Mickey (3:39 pm):_ something came up, staying out tonight

The whole lecture gasped and turned to look right at Ian when his forehead found its way onto his desk again.


	2. lonely night

_Ian (5:33 pm):_ Do you still wanna get dinner?

“Is the quiz on Monday?” Lucia asked Ian with a nudge as they walked through campus back towards the dormitories. “I feel like Watters said he was postponing it to Wednesday, but I also might be getting that mixed up with the lab practical.”

He shrugged her off. “I don’t know.”

 _Ian (5:34 pm):_ Or what about breakfast tomorrow if you’re staying out tonight  
_Ian (5:34 pm):_ Whose place are you staying at?

“You’re gonna trip if you keep looking at your phone. You know the quad’s a fucking mess with the pavement sticking up all over the place.”

Ian grunted, hardly even hearing her warning much less actually processing it.

 _Ian (5:35 pm):_ Ritchie’s? Logan’s?  
_Ian (5:35 pm):_ I can bring over your toothbrush or some food or something

“Ian, I don’t think he’s going to respond,” Lucia sighed.

“Just, like,” Ian began sharply, slapping his phone onto his thigh in frustration. His feet stuck down to the ground, causing Lucia, who already had dread lumping itself in her throat, to hesitantly turn around to him, prepared to have Ian’s greatest grievances unloaded to her in the middle of the goddamn walkway. “How was I supposed to know he considered us to be boyfriends?! We never talked about it!”

“On God,” Lucia said, raising her hand up in promise, “I genuinely thought you guys were dating. Like, all the way official with promise rings and shit.” She furrowed her brows. “Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure everyone we know thought you guys were dating.”

Ian’s jaw dropped in horror before his body suddenly relaxed from shock. “You’re fucking joking. What do you mean ‘everyone’?”

“Like… I know Ritchie and his whole group thought you guys were together for sure ‘cause he told me he was bummed about how the group feels all empty now since you guys spend so much time together. Me and all my friends have been arguing for a couple weeks now trying to figure out the exact date you guys made it official. I mean—” She shook a little from trying to contain her laughter. “Your entire fucking Instagram is just pictures of you and Mickey doing shit.”

Ian’s facial muscles and jaw twitched as he recounted the information presented to him, all the times people had lumped him and Mickey as a unit in passing and the general state of their relationship—including its countless sleepovers, hours lost to nighttime chatter about the cosmos along with more intimate pillowtalk, gentle morning kisses, lustful nights, and uninterrupted texting to fill in all the gaps in between—slapping him in the face. Of course he and Mickey were dating—he kept screaming it at himself as his sheer ignorance of reality and hopeless obliviousness dematerialized around him, leaving him feeling ridicuously stupid with a pinch of absolutely fucking mortified.

He rolled his eyes heavenward, wishing that the sky would drop down on him so hard that he’d sink through the concrete, and asked the universe: “Did everyone know we were dating except for me?”

The universe answered in the form of Lucia flinging herself in his face and belting an emphatic, “ _Yes!_ ”

Ian’s eyes kept rolling further and further into the sky until his soles were lifting off the ground and his body was falling back towards the earth.

“Oh my fucking God,” he whimpered as Lucia caught him by the wrist and pulled him onto his feet again.

She gave him a gentle pat on the arm. “Look, dude, I don’t think he’s gonna respond to you right now, and obsessively texting him is just gonna piss him off more. Maybe you should leave it alone for today—maybe give him a call tomorrow and ask if you can talk it out. I don’t really know Mickey, but he seems like a reasonable and chill guy.”

Ian’s eyes finally met Lucia’s face, but they pierced her with an uneasy squint. “He is, but Mickey also likes to be dramatic.”

“He does not. He’s so chill; there is no fucking way he’s dramatic,” she scoffed.

“Then you don’t know Mickey,” Ian laughed sardonically.

Lucia rolled her eyes, unconvinced with Ian’s characterization. She hadn’t ever heard a negative breath about Mickey Milkovich, much less something as outrageous as the prospect of him being “dramatic”, whatever the hell that meant. She chalked it up to Ian overthinking the situation and fearing the worst, even though the extent of those fears were not likely based on reality.

“I think it’s gonna be fine,” she assured him, watching Ian’s shoulders and chest deflate with defeat and sadness. She gnawed the inside of her cheek. “Do you wanna join me and my friends for dinner? You don’t even have to talk to us; we can just talk at you. Vince just broke up with Kelly, and she hasn’t stopped talking for the last three days.”

Ian sighed and pulled out his phone, a singed piece of his heart stinging his chest as he stared at a screen devoid of notifications.

“Sure,” he agreed with a shrug. “Guess my plans are cancelled anyway.”

The corner of her mouth quirked with sympathy, and as much as she wanted to say something else to try to alleviate Ian’s misery and woe, she wasn’t sure if the melancholy man before her would respond to anything except the forgiveness of his apparent-boyfriend. She gave him a little nod, locked their arms together, and started leading them towards the dining hall, jabbering on about various pop culture tidbits in an effort to distract him in any way at all.

* * *

Across town, in a cul-de-sac where each house seemed to be in a competition with the others on whose roof could be the closest to God, Mickey was angrily raving into his phone. In his hurt-fueled madness upon returning to the dorm, he only thought to grab a clean t-shirt, two mismatched socks, and his toothbrush before stomping off campus in the vague direction of a destination, his feet hitting the ground harder and harder the closer he got. Despite his shouting and energy-filled jumping earning him stink eyes and scorns from the quiet, beige residents, he continued on along the road, waving the incohesive assortment of articles in his hand wildly. 

“Like what the actual fuck, Mandy?!” Mickey shouted for the umpteenth time at his sister. “Just fucking friends?! I suck this dude’s dick nearly every fuckin’ day and get him his fuckin’ _breakfast_ , and he tells people that we’re just friends?!”

“Well—”

“I don’t get it! I thought it was so fuckin’ obvious! We’re basically livin’ together, and we’re sleepin’ in bed with each other everyday. Mandy, we fucking _cuddle_!”

“Did—?”

“Was he fucking joking?” Mickey felt dizzy but persisted anyway, repeating the same befuddled but irate train of thought yet again. “If he was jokin’, that was the stupidest fuckin’ joke anyone’s ever said. Like, we live together, sleep together every night, only fuck each other, get each other fuckin’ _gifts_. Was it ‘cause we didn’t fuckin’ hold hands when we walked around or some shit? I just didn’t initiate it ‘cause I thought he wouldn’t be into it! Did I misread fuckin’ everything? Mandy, I don’t fuckin’ _get it_!” he yelled, each new thought immediately punching out from the last. He stamped his foot on the pavement like he was intent on breaking every bone in his leg. With his attempt at crushing the earth unsuccessful, he felt winded, suddenly so depleted of breath and rage that he felt like he was on the verge of collapsing.

Mandy let the silence stretch on for a few beats before she spoke. “Are you done?”

“Yeah,” Mickey huffed, resuming his trek with comparatively featherlike steps.

“Okay,” Mandy said slowly. “What I’ve been trying to ask for the last fifteen fucking minutes was if you and Ian ever had a talk about what you guys are.”

“The fuck’s the point of that?”

“I mean, most guys aren’t like you, Mick. You need to wave shit in their face for them to get it.”

“Why the fuck do I need to wave shit? How the fuck was it not obvious?!” Mickey implored, his voice raising in intensity with each successive syllable.

“If you start fucking screaming at me again, I’m gonna reach my hands through this phone and punch you in the fucking face!” she warned, more for Mickey’s sake than her own—she could practically see the vein on his neck threatening to burst through his skin.

Mickey paused and took in a deep breath that succeeded in pushing his hurt into a temporary corner of restraint. 

“No, we didn’t have a talk or anythin’ like that.”

“Ugh, Mick, you really can’t expect every dude to just assume shit that’s obvious to you. You need to spell it out for him,” she explained.

“What-fuckin’-ever,” he grunted. “‘M just gonna go be pissed at my buddy’s place and smoke.”

“Mickey,” she began, voice coated with sincerity. “From what you’ve told me, Ian sounds like a really nice guy, and it also sounds like he’s really into you. He’s probably just a little nervous on top of being very clueless.”

“Don’t even give a shit anymore,” Mickey grumbled, hand itching to drop all the stuff he was holding onto the ground so he could reach for his cigarettes.

Mandy rolled her eyes. “I’ve gotta go ‘cause I have stuff I need to do, but just try to calm down. And don’t do anything stupid like cutting one of your toes off!”

“Still can’t believe Iggy managed to do that,” Mickey shuddered as he crossed through the lawn of Ritchie’s house, the memory’s chill momentarily zapping him from his frenzy.

“Bye, assface,” Mandy sang before hanging up.

Mickey pulled the phone off his ear with a grumble, taking a second to scroll through his missed notifications. He let out a loud, frustrated scoff when he saw a pile of texts from Ian. He felt his face grow hotter, peeved that Ian had sent him such benign messages when the situation was so acute and grand, but also peeved that Ian had seemingly given up on trying to get a response from him after a measly five messages. Frustrated that the earth was still on its fucking orbit, he shoved his phone into his pocket and stormed up to the front door.

“Open the fuck up!” he yelled out as he hammered the door with his fist.

A few seconds passed before one of his friends, Logan, peeled the door open, eyes low and easy from his high.

“Hey, man,” he greeted with a slight rasp. He quickly took note of the absence accompanying Mickey’s presence. “Ian’s not with you?”

Mickey gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes before wordlessly slipping into the house. He walked through until he reached the living room where he found Ritchie along with two more of their friends melting into the couches with three bongs and mountain of weed sat on the coffee table.

Ritchie perked up first, looking up from his phone upon hearing the familiar sound of Mickey’s footsteps. “Hey, man. What’s up? Whatchu here for? Thought we wasn’t seein’ you ‘til the weekend.” He was perplexed when a tall ginger didn’t follow Mickey in on his tail. “Where your boy at?”

Mickey simply let out a disgusted noise, threw his stuff onto the coffee table, and dropped himself down onto an empty seat on one of the couches, alerting the rest of his friends to come out of their weed-induced hibernations.

“Somethin’ happen?” Ritchie asked with a worried quiver in his voice, sending an uneasy look to Logan as he returned to the room.

“Could fuckin’ say that,” Mickey said, reaching for the cigarettes in his backpocket. “Damnit, fucker has my lighter,” he muttered to himself but loud enough that everyone else could hear. He picked a random one off the table.

“Oh shit. What’s going on? You guys break up?” Andres asked, baring his teeth in fear of the answer.

Mickey laughed humorlessly, the plastic of the cigarette box crinkling under his fervent tapping.

“Apparently we were never together in the first place.”

The shocked looks that the four other men exchanged was summarized by Logan blurting out, “Fucking _what_?”

Mickey simply nodded, echoing their disbelief as he lit up his cigarette and took a painfully long drag from it.

“Whatever,” he mumbled. “Shouldn’t be this hung up about some dick anyway.”

As the words left his mouth, though, he felt a sudden pain in his stomach, as if his body were trying to punish him for uttering such statements especially since he knew that, despite all his hurt and fury, he didn’t actually mean it. He valued Ian way more than just “some dick”, no matter how much he wished in the moment that Ian and anything that Ian had said about them didn’t matter to him at all. He liked Ian—he liked how their bodies molded together when they slept, the way Ian’s voice changed with his moods, their easy routine of walking each other to class and getting food, laughing with him about nonsense, the little comments he made when they watched movies. He felt so guilty and regretful that he even vocalized such a phrase that his body suddenly rid itself of any remaining outrage. He exhaled a small sigh as feelings of sadness and emptiness descended upon him, and he became acutely aware of how alone he felt when he knew Ian wasn’t within arm’s reach. He watched the smoke rise from the cigarette and waved a weak hand at his friends, the motion telling them to disregard what he had just said.

“This really fucking sucks,” Mickey said, a degree of hopelessness sitting atop his tone as he fell against the couch cushion and faced the ceiling.

It was quiet for a few moments as the men let the information sit in the room, Mickey’s friends attempting to silently make their own inferences as they figured that Mickey was far too in his own head with hurt to answer their inquiries anyway. They just let the information dawdle in between different corners of the house with the thick, cloudy air tightening their lungs as they sat in limbo, awaiting an unclear fate.

Mickey’s eyes, which had lolled closed as his friends digested his bombshell, suddenly snapped open. He sat up and narrowed his gaze on the hazy group.

“Is there anything goin’ on tonight?” Mickey asked.

“Uhh, don’t think so,” Ritchie answered. “Weirdly quiet for a Friday.”

Hope flashed across Mickey’s face. “You think we could get everythin’ ready for a party at ten o’clock?”

“Think we could, but I gotta ask my parents—” Ritchie began only to be cut off by Mickey.

“No no, we’re not doin’ it here.” He turned and pointed his cigarette at Logan, hearing a goddamn chorus of angels in his head as he beheld his friend’s greasy, unkempt curls sticking out from under his beanie. “We’re doin’ it at his place.”

“Why the fuck are we doing it at my place?”

“Because,” Mickey began as he reached into his pocket for his phone, “your place is bigger, and it has that weird hidden awning thing on the second floor, and I needa be up there so I can see everythin’.”

Logan was about to protest, but the weed had replaced his debate skills with a pleasant pile of pink mush, so he just shrugged and beckoned for Andres to follow him as he started leaving the room. “Aight, man. I’m never not down to get fucked up. Me and Andres’ll head over there to get some shit together.”

Mickey nodded with satisfaction and began scrolling through his contacts, searching for people to send the party’s details to. He nudged Ben, the man beside him on the couch who had managed to doze off during the quiet time after the initial commotion.

“What?” he yawned.

“Lip Gallagher’s in your frat, right?”

Ben chuckled and rubbed his eyes. “You don’t need to specify that it’s Lip Gallagher, Mick. How many guys do you know named fucking Lip?”

Mickey laughed and gave him a quick elbow in the side. “Text him the address, ‘n tell ‘em he can bring his friends.”

“Don’t you know him, too? Why can’t you do it?” he asked, stretching out his stiff back with a strained grunt.

“Just do it, man,” Mickey beseeched, eyes weary and begging.

Ben shrugged and grabbed his phone from the coffee table.

“Send it to him ‘fore anyone else,” Mickey added, watching as Ben’s thumb scrolled through his contacts.

* * *

“It’s so fucking unfair,” Kelly wailed into her napkin, her cheeks glistening under the harsh lights of the dining hall. “I did everything for him, and he just fucks off? And on my _birthday_?!”

“I know,” Molly repeated yet again. The hand that she had placed on her friend’s shoulder had transitioned from gentle, reassuring strokes to the pelts of a broom attacking a fly on the wall, but Kelly was none the wiser to everyone’s growing annoyance at her cries and chants about the horrors of heartbreak.

“It’s so fucking unfair!” Kelly repeated with a dramatic heave before turning around and tossing herself over Molly’s shoulders to sob into her neck. Molly let out an exasperated sigh and stared at the ceiling in agony but hugged her friend back anyway.

On the other side of the booth, Ian was watching the scene with a certain fascination, cheek cupped in his hand and jaw just wide enough for audible wonder to escape his lips when Kelly let something particularly scandalous drop. Though, while Ian was gawking at the trainwreck before him with amazement, the rest of the table was not sharing his enchantment—everyone else was watching the scene with irritation, letting out sighs when the tears returned and very obviously zoning out on their phones as their patience withered down to translucency.

“Oh, come on, sweetie,” Molly said with a strained voice because of how hard Kelly was holding onto her. “Let’s get you home and put you in bed. Yeah? How’s that sound?”

Kelly sob-nodded into her shoulder.

“Alright, okay, let’s go,” Molly continued, shushing her as they slowly slid out of the booth. With each centimeter they were closer to the exit, Ian could feel the hope and energy return to the group. Molly mouthed “I’ll be back later” to everyone before quickly leading a still weeping Kelly out of the dining hall.

“Wow,” Madison exhaled once the sudden silence descended upon them. “I did not expect her to do that for that long.”

“Yeah, she usually doesn’t cry in public,” Lucia commented, still staring at the exit for fear that Kelly would run back in. The rest of the group just shrugged and resumed their chatter from before the cries began.

“Uh, sorry about that,” Lucia whispered to Ian. “I thought she’d just complain a bit—that was a lot.”

“It’s fine,” Ian said with a reassuring wave. “Any distraction I can get is good with me.”

Lucia nodded and turned back to the group’s conversation. Ian observed everyone in silence, following the words out of people’s mouths with his eyes but not particularly listening, mostly using the noise as static for fear that, if his mind went quiet, it would start wandering into speculations that Ian didn’t want to confront. In the odd moments of silence that occured during his walk over to the dining hall, his brain had quickly conjured up every worst case scenario possible for the fate of his and Mickey’s relationship, the severity of each situation threatening to drown him. He just had to get through the next day or two—it would allow Mickey enough space from Ian so they could actually have a discussion about the state of their relationship and what it meant. Mickey was understandably hurt, and Ian was sure he could solve it. But, Christ, it was driving him crazy not being able to talk to Mickey about it right then. Ian’s incessant need to fix everything immediately was driving him up the wall—he’d had to keep his fingers from reaching for his phone more times than he could count, itching to send a long, incoherent text to Mickey apologizing off his ass and begging for forgiveness likely way before Mickey was ready to give it. He cared about Mickey, and he cared about what they had going on—he just had to wait a day or two.

Ian felt his tongue turn to marble in his mouth when he realized that two uncertainty-filled days were going to have the same drag as six miserable years. He sighed and was about to refocus his attention on the group's chatter when he recognized his brother coming up from behind the booth.

“Hey, Ian,” Lip greeted his brother, giving a polite wave to everyone else.

“Hey, Lip. What the hell are you doing in the healthy dining hall?”

“I have no clue. Amanda wanted a fuckin’ salad or something, but she just saw some girls from her sorority so now I don’t know when I’ll get her back.” He scanned the group with a crumpled brow as he slid into the booth to sit beside his brother, perplexed by the obvious absence. “Hey, where’s Mickey at?”

Ian felt a little piece of his soul escape his body with his whimper—now that he was aware of it, he couldn’t believe just how often he got asked that question.

“I have no clue,” he admitted, feeling his cheeks flush. “Really long story.”

Lip adopted a shocked but concerned look. He leaned into his brother’s ear and whispered, “Did you guys break up?”

Ian pulled his mouth into a tight line and sucked in a sharp breath, feeling ashamed in the admission that had to follow. “I… didn’t realize we were dating, so I said he and I were just friends, and now he’s really pissed. Said he was staying somewhere else tonight and everything.”

Lip whistled at the gravity of the situation as he processed the information.

“Yeah, that’s bad,” Lip said through his teeth.

“Yeah, fucking tell me about it,” Ian returned and cupped his reddening face in his hands.

“So, what? You’re just letting him cool off before you start groveling?”

“Basically,” Ian sighed, taking his face out of his hands to look at his brother. “As much as I want to text him right now or track him down and get on my knees or some shit, I really don’t wanna say the wrong thing and hurt him even more.”

“Smart,” Lip said, admiration evident in his tone. He reached for his phone, which was buzzing against his leg. “Good to do that; give Mickey some time to relax and miss your ass a little bit. He’s probably just at Ritchie’s place watching musicals and smoking weed honestly.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Ian nodded. “I’m getting really out of my depth worrying when he’s probably just trying to deal with his feelings by himself.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Lip said as he started reading through his messages. “Give it a day, and he’ll… wait…”

“What?”

“Ben Kowalczyk just texted me with an address to a party,” Lip summarized, stretching out the syllables as he tried to piece together the situation's nuances.

“Ooh, a party!” Rachel emphasized from across the table, throwing an excited fist into the air. “We should go pick up Molly and head over together!”

Ian didn’t even look over at her—he kept staring at his brother in puzzlement, eyebrows knit together and the corners of his mouth raised up by befuddlement as he tried to attribute any sense to the situation.

Ian was stunned by his confusion, so much so that his voice would only allow him to exhale a barely audible, “What?”

* * *

By 10:30, the party was well underway, and Mickey was perched up on the second floor’s hidden awning, watching the attendants with a scrutinizing eye. The ashtray beside him was quickly accumulating more and more cigarettes as Mickey kept mechanically drawing them to and from his mouth, replacing completed sticks with fresh ones before he had the time to take a clean breath. He kept scanning the crowd, combing through each person over and over, intent on spotting a head of red hair in the sea of bodies. There were a few redheads sprinkled throughout the party, and every time Mickey would catch a glimpse of them, he could feel the excitement in him be piqued before settling down into a wallow of disappointment when he realized that whoever the hell that jackass was, he wasn’t Ian.

“S’all very Jay Gatsby,” Ritchie noted, startling Mickey a bit because, in his concentration, he’d forgotten Ritchie was up there with him at all.

“Who the fuck’s that?” Mickey grumbled, his annoyance split between his friend distracting him from his sacred task and the fact that his cigarette had just burned all the way down.

“Never got ‘round to reading _The Great Gatsby_?” Ritchie inquired. Mickey shook his head. “‘S ‘bout this dude who threw these massive fuckin’ parties every weekend—with, like, strippers and elephants and shit—just hopin’ that this one girl he fucked ‘round with ten years earlier would come by so he could see her.”

“Think I gotta get an elephant to make him show up?” Mickey deadpanned.

“Maybe,” Ritchie laughed. He let the silence linger for a moment before he asked, “What if he don’t come?”

“It’ll really fuckin’ suck if he doesn’t,” Mickey replied, the dread sinking into him as the words flew out. Ritchie simply nodded and leaned back in his seat.

By the time an hour had passed, Mickey was on the awning alone, leaning over the railing in an attempt to get a closer look at the partygoers. His palms were getting sweaty, and his grip on his cigarette was in danger of crushing the filter. He inspected the main floor for the millionth time, all the while keeping a watchful eye on the front door. Another twenty minutes passed by without any more attendees entering the party, and Mickey resigned with a heavy sigh that the event was likely at capacity. He stubbed out his cigarette and checked his phone, scrolling through swathes of unimportant notifications.

He glanced at the time. 11:58pm.

“Fuck this,” he grumbled to himself and began retreating towards the bedrooms. “He’s not coming.”

* * *

Ian and company entered the party at 12:07am and were immediately overwhelmed by just how packed to the brim the house was with people. There were so many faces Ian didn’t even remotely recognize, and it took him a second to identify the location as Logan’s house because the party disguised it to look more like a nightclub than the usual house party—blue and yellow strobe lights were whipping through the air, and there was a DJ with turntables up on the dias. He essentially lost Lip upon entry and could barely squeeze through the dense crowd, dancing bodies banging against him like he was in a pinball machine as he tried to reach any pocket of air. After a few minutes of struggling, he managed to force his way into the kitchen, which was still populated by people, but at least the faces in it were familiar.

“Hey, Ian!” Phoebe, a girl from Ian’s physics class, called out. She waved him over to where she and her girlfriend were talking against the fridge.

“Hey. What’s up?” he asked as he brought her into a brief hug.

"Not much. It is fucking _crazy_ out there! Totally wasn’t what I was expecting,” she explained, pressing her solo cup against her neck as if she were clutching her pearls.

“Tell me about it,” Ian said, looking back at the impenetrable crowd with a shudder.

Phoebe narrowed her gaze at the absence beside Ian. “Where’s Mickey at?”

“That’s actually what I was hoping to ask you,” Ian laughed awkwardly and ran a hand through his hair.

“Oh no,” she gasped, mouth dropping open. “Did you guys break up?”

Ian let out a defeated little sigh and dug his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “I don’t even know anymore.”

“Mmm, sorry, babe. I haven’t seen him tonight,” Phoebe said sadly, shooting her girlfriend a nervous glance.

“Sorry, man. I haven’t seen him either. We saw Ben a little while ago, but he disappeared,” the girlfriend added.

“Fuck,” Ian groaned quietly, balling his hands up into fists.

“Yeah, I’ve actually been looking around for him because I need to ask him about something for our class. I thought it was so weird that I didn’t see him because he’s always floating around and talking to people at these things,” Phoebe tacked on quickly.

“Fuck, and you seriously haven’t seen him anywhere?”

She shook her head, and her girlfriend mirrored her. “Not at all.”

Ian frowned.

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll take a look around and see if I can find him,” Ian sighed, feeling more hopeless with each word.

“Aww, babe! Good luck. Big hugs!” she squeaked and threw her arms around Ian’s torso, some of her beer spilling out of her cup onto the tile floor.

Ian waddled off from the kitchen to float through the house aimlessly, looking for anyone who even remotely resembled Mickey, disappointment dousing his being when the ever changing object of his attention turned out to be some rando. He walked through the entire house five separate times, taking extra care to weasel through the concentrated spots of the house with a more keen eye in case Mickey was trying to lose himself in the crowds. Each time, however, Ian returned to the kitchen with more pieces of his optimism cut off, feeling more crushed than he thought was possible. After one last sweep of the house, Ian came to terms with the fact that either Mickey was deliberately avoiding him or he had left long ago.

He slipped out of the immense house with sadness sitting heavy on his back and hopelessness filling out his ribcage, sending a single text to Lip to mark his departure.

 _Ian (1:14am):_ I’m going home

* * *

That night, though neither of them knew about the state of the other, each man laid in a horrifically empty bed, sleeping alone for the first time in weeks. Mickey was laid on his back, annoyed at how the music from below vibrated the floor and infuriated that he didn’t have the personal heater that was Ian’s body pressed against his. His vexation was interlaced with hurt, though—the pain lingering on from the afternoon was being compounded upon by Ian’s absence at the party, and before Mickey knew it, he had flopped over onto his stomach, and his tears were wetting the fitted sheet.

On the other side of town, in a tiny dorm room that was feeling impossibly large, Ian was laying on his side with an arm clutching a pillow—Mickey’s pillow—and digging his nose into the fabric in an effort to ground himself in Mickey’s scent as he tried to figure out Mickey’s location based on his inexplicable absence at the party. His mind travelled to every part of campus and town, but the task was hopeless because Mickey could have been either everywhere or nowhere. The fact that Ian’s phone had been quiet was making him feel worse, too, especially considering he didn’t get invited to the party directly. The whole situation was so confusing that it was making Ian feel like their relationship was possibly not even salvageable, and the idea of that being reality finally made the tears forming in his waterline trickle down his face.


	3. three days later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to the folks on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_clennam) who voted in my coffee poll

Ian was convinced that the image of his phone lying helplessly on random surfaces in his life would be imprinted on his brain forever. He took every opportunity he could to stare at his phone, begging for it to light up with the notification he was waiting for, and he even found himself becoming annoyed when he had to take two online, proctored quizzes for his classes because it meant he had to fling his phone into his backpack—and what if _that_ would be the moment Mickey called and he missed it? He sped through both of his quizzes, barely even finishing reading the questions before he marked his answers in a bid to throw his hands back onto his phone as fast as possible. To his horror, his screen remained devoid of the one thing he sought, and he swore he could see flecks of his sanity floating off of him like dust traveling aimlessly through the universe. 

As much as he wanted to hear from Mickey and not miss his first communication, he was also getting so damn sick of watching his phone light up with random, inane crap—it had been only a day and a half since the party, and he could feel his patience depleting at an even faster rate than his sanity. That night at dinner with Lucia and her friends, Ian had a laser focus on his phone as he mindlessly pushed around his mushy ravioli with his fork in an attempt to somehow spread out the bustling energy in his body, noticing the chatter of his group layered on top of the craze of the dining hall but managing to filter it out into nothing more than indiscernible mumbles.

Lip said that within a day or two Mickey would be calmed down enough to talk through the situation, so Ian was unsure why the more he distanced himself from the night of the party, the more he felt like Mickey was intentionally avoiding and ignoring him. It didn’t help that he hadn’t seen Mickey on campus since that Friday when they’d walked Ian to class, and Ian felt that if Mickey wanted to talk, he would have at least seen him _somewhere_. Despite how much he looked and searched through the crowds in the quad, libraries, and other various buildings he hoped and prayed he’d find Mickey at, the man was nowhere to be seen. It also didn’t help that, whenever Ian asked someone if they’d seen Mickey, they all relayed the same thing—they hadn’t seen him either (and the admission was usually followed by an aghast “oh my God, did you guys break up?”).

Ian squinted at his phone and tightened his grip on his fork so hard that his arm began to shake. He could feel the ridges of his teeth sliding unevenly against one another, the dry, sandpapery sound of it echoing throughout his head. The world around him grew quiet, and his vision became greyer and blearier as his gaze narrowed some more, as if he were trying to cast a spell on his phone to light up with a text from Mickey. His eyelids were starting to jitter when a sudden white halo blast into view, and his eyes shot open. He scrambled over the table to get a look at his screen, feeling his chest grow cold as he read his latest notification.

He let out an animalistic yelp and roughly smacked his phone screen when he realized it was merely a reminder from the college about a professional development day. By the time he had plonked back down on the seat with a vexed huff, the other occupants of the table were all looking at him with fearful eyes.

“Sorry,” he grumbled and stabbed a ravioli so hard that his fork scraped the plate. Day two was winding down, and Ian had determined that clocks and the times they told were useless. Emotions didn't run on minutes or hours—they ran on energy, and their potency had both a half-life and an expiration. He was also finding out that he was scared to learn when that expiration was in regards to Mickey's feelings for him.

* * *

Still lodged in an impersonal bedroom halfway across town, Mickey was laying on a bed and listening to his sister prattle about various bits of local drama as well as general catchup on the state of their family including an odd insight or two into their father’s continuing mental decline and sweltering anger and hatred. Though Mickey usually listened closely to her and often asked questions about whatever particularly intrigued him, he was being rather quiet during this phone call, more focused on dragging his thumb and fingers across foreign bedsheets, wishing that when he looked over he’d see a sleeping Ian by his side.

He kept feeling the bedsheets, oddly missing the scratchy sensation of Ian’s pillowcases, so immersed in the vast expanse of the bed that he didn’t notice Mandy’s prolonged silence as she tried to gauge the state of her brother.

“So what’s been happening with you?” she eventually tried, voice sounding gentle and inquisitive.

“Feel like I need to go on a date,” Mickey sighed, feeling the words zap the energy from his being. He’d managed to think himself into a hole over the last two days, feelings of inadequacy and loneliness taking the form of the thick down comforter that he’d been suffocating under all weekend. When he heard Mandy’s breath catch in her throat, he simply sighed again and began scratching at his temple, the skin raw and flaky from his incessant itching.

“A date?” she echoed, her creased eyebrows evident in her voice. “Did things not work out with Ian?”

“S’not gonna work out, I don’t think,” he mumbled. “Didn’t come by this thing I threw on Friday.”

“How do you know?”

“‘Cause I sat up on the second floor for two hours waitin’ for him to show up, and he never did,” he answered sourly.

“Maybe you just didn’t see him?”

Mickey snorted. “Would’ve seen ‘em.”

Mandy exhaled a defeated breath, the speaker crackling in Mickey’s ear as she turned over the information.

“That sucks,” she said. “He sounded like a really nice guy.”

Mickey moved to scratching the back of his neck, searing bright red stripes into the flesh. “I don’t even know how to date ‘cause I didn’t really wanna do that shit too much ‘til I met him, and it was just so good right away.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “it seemed like you guys had really good chemistry.”

“We did!” he exclaimed and slapped himself in the face. “Could just talk to the shithead for hours and never get bored. Even when we wasn’t talkin’ about, like, ourselves and joking around or whatever, I still liked listenin’ to him—he says he remembers shit better when it’s said out loud, so he’ll just, like… talk to himself when he’s studyin’? I liked listenin’ to him tryin’ to memorize all these weird bond properties.” He could feel sorrow filling his chest as he spoke, the pressure punching tears into his eyes.

“Yeah,” Mandy returned sadly. “Sorry, Mick.”

Mickey emitted a throaty noise but did not respond verbally otherwise, instead focusing on trying to keep the tears in his eyes by digging his nails deeper and harder into his flesh, feeling the shaved off cells bunch up under his claws.

“Maybe,” Mandy began delicately, causing Mickey’s attention to pivot away from the shaking feeling in his arms and onto her, “you don’t have to go on a _date_ date? You could just hang out with someone, and if it leads to something, then pursue it if you want. I don’t think you have to force yourself to get over Ian tomorrow or anything like that, you know?”

Despite his dry mouth, Mickey managed to swallow the lump building in his throat, and his fingers finally relaxed, the digits feeling cold against his burning neck. “I guess.”

“You could meet someone off Tinder and get coffee,” she suggested.

He was uneasy at the thought—he and Ian had just broken up (he wondered if it even counted as breaking up), and the idea of having to listen to the dribbles of anyone else other than Ian made him feel kind of sick. He was so used to Ian’s inflections, the different types of laughs he had, the way his voice changed throughout the day, and how all of his little nuances clumped together into something that felt so comfortable and homely that Mickey was uncertain if the company of another would give him even a tenth of the feelings that he had when with Ian.

“I guess,” he repeated. Perhaps, he reasoned, it couldn’t hurt to try. Even if his date went horribly wrong, at least it would be a distraction from the aching sensation that was sitting on his chest and compressing his lungs.

“Think about it,” she said, her tone like a reassuring embrace.

Though Mickey did not vocalize it, his sister could hear his nod through the speaker. Mickey was a bit more talkative once they resumed their previous string of chatter, but their conversation didn’t last much longer—it mostly just the final sprinklings of random stories from her mall trip during the weekend as well as cousins who extended their well wishes and expressed a desire to see him again—but Mandy seemed reluctant to actually hang up the phone, lest her brother continue his wallowing. However, when Mickey’s already short responses went silent, Mandy knew she had no choice but to hang up the phone and hope that he would manage to perk up soon.

And, as much as Mickey wanted to fulfill her unsaid wishes, he couldn’t find it in himself to get out of bed. He flopped over onto his side and gazed out through the sheer curtain flowing gently against the window into the dying evening, watching as darkness crawled across the sky, twilight tucking under the horizon. All he could think about was that first night with Ian and how the moon hung above them and how the pale light settled onto Ian’s skin in a soft glow. Before he knew it, his mind had flung him through to the end of the memory where Ian’s lips were pressed against his, and all Mickey could manage to do was sigh his whole soul out into the passionless room.

He looked at his phone and slid his fingers toward it. Perhaps, he thought, a distraction wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

* * *

It was a crisp Monday morning, and Ian was infuriated with whoever the hell had designed the layout of the buildings on campus. Other much more sensible schools had their science and engineering buildings holed up on one half of campus while the buildings dedicated to the humanities and arts laid claim to the other half. Logically, this was the most practical way to divide the disciplines, so Ian was livid that the two buildings dedicated to engineering were nestled between the buildings for English and history, an insulting distance from the chemistry building, which was where he had to be in exactly twelve minutes even though he had yet to reach the engineering buildings and running back across campus took another ten.

He was sure Mickey would be delighted to help him kick in the teeth of whoever was behind the design.

He kept running, though, intent on just seeing Mickey in the flesh even if he couldn’t muster up the courage to talk to him and straighten everything out right then. He’d spent all weekend longing for the feeling of his body laying beside his own, and he thought that if he could just see Mickey—see him living and breathing and hopefully without a scowl on his face—that it would be a good omen in regards to their relationship and its future potential.

He finally reached the building, red faced and with his shirt cold and sticking to his skin but still determined. He ascended the steps of the building and scrambled along the first floor, whizzing by swarms of people lined up outside classrooms, all glaring at him oddly and awkwardly. Even the atmosphere that stretched across the floor felt just a few degrees too warm and too stuffy. Ian looked back at the peeled eyes studying his every move, all the pupils and creased foreheads seeming like they wished to communicate dire something to him. Though some force kept nagging at Ian, telling him to pause his mission and ask for clarity from the rather frightened onlookers, he chalked up the rubbernecking to people just being generally shocked with a tall, sweaty redhead who definitely didn’t belong running through the engineering building.

He finally reached Mickey’s classroom, thanking every deity that the professor had chosen to leave the door open so he could peer inside. He huddled up against the doorframe, still feeling the eyes on his back as he surveyed the lecture hall, tracing up and down the seats repeatedly only to see nothing. And, again, nothing. And, one more time for good measure, nothing. Mickey had not gone to class, and Ian’s heart was falling out of his ass.

When he turned around with an agape, panicked expression, feeling like the force of a tornado was keeping him pinned against the wall, the meaning of the eyes lining each side of the hallway, which were now mirroring his horror while still screaming something incommunicable at him, suddenly dawned on him:

Mickey Milkovich was up to something, and everyone except Ian Gallagher knew what it was.

* * *

Mickey could feel how awkward his gait was, and he was blaming it on his jeans being abnormally tight on his hips and thighs. His ungainly steps were definitely not a result of the fact that he was en route to a coffee date and absolutely terrified out of his mind about it, a mantra that he kept repeating to himself in an effort to will any ounce of confidence and contentment into himself. 

Though he’d heard of the man in passing many times before, he'd finally officially met Danny Sutherland on a dating app at around two in the morning, and Danny’s very incoherent texting and eventual admission that “ _sorry, dude, but I’m rolling soooooo hard rn_ ” made Mickey feel like if he was going to get a decent distraction from the heartache that was his and Ian’s breakup, Danny would be the one to deliver. He expected absolutely nothing from typical frat guy and jock Danny, but at least he would have maybe a few laughs and a nice head of strawberry blond hair and some freckles to look at for an hour or so.

Even with his expectations for their coffee date in the toilet and feeling uncertain that Danny would even show up at all given his apparently wild night, Mickey still decided to arrive at the campus café hilariously early for their date. He’d been cooped up in various immense houses the entire weekend, and the sheer space and loneliness was eating at him. He thought that being around the general public would ground him in reality a bit. So he kept walking, his toes feeling uncomfortable in his shoes and his heart still heavy and weary, hoping that he could begin chipping at the continental iceberg of heartbreak before him.

* * *

Ian stumbled out of the engineering building dazed and confused with his eyes open so wide that they were turning painfully dry. He surveyed the campus aimlessly, looking for any sign of Mickey that he could find because, if he were being honest, he was starting to get scared. His terror amplified when he saw the same concerned expressions on the faces of people walking past him. The sinking feeling in his stomach from the weekend returned, and he could barely take one step without feeling like his nerve cells were falling apart.

The first, albeit very indirect, sign of Mickey that had graced Ian’s eyes in over two days aside from the party was that of Ritchie moseying towards the English building for his morning classes. With a surge of energy bolting through him, Ian ran towards Mickey’s friend, and when Ritchie noticed the frantic man barrelling at him, he adopted the same horrified expression as everyone else.

“Ritchie!” Ian yelled, horribly out of breath. He could see Ritchie’s fingers and legs twitching to run, but whether it was Ian’s imploring face or the determination that emanated from him or Ritchie’s failure to process the situation in time, he stayed in place until Ian jogged up beside him. “Have you seen Mickey?”

“Uhh,” Ritchie began but trailed off, scratching his head with eyes fixed on the building that contained his class. “‘S with me o’er the weekend for a bit.”

“What about today?” He pointed at the engineering building. “He wasn’t in class.”

“Uhh,” Ritchie buzzed again, looking anywhere but Ian’s entreatful face. “Think the dude’s, uh…”

Ian pierced him with his pupils. “Where is he, Ritchie?”

Ritchie gritted his teeth and finally met Ian’s desperate eyes. “Think the dude’s got a date.”

Ian’s jaw hit the concrete.

* * *

There was a loud knocking on Lip Gallagher’s door that morning, and the man hidden inside the dorm room felt the sweat prickle his neck when he quickly realized who must have been banging on the wood. He tiptoed towards the hammering and slowly, while bracing for impact as if he were expecting a monster to be on the other side, pried the door away from its frame.

He was right to do so because the second Ian saw the light of Lip’s room seeping into the hallway, he shoved the door all the way open and marched in.

“Did you hear he’s going on a fucking date?! Because he’s going on a fucking date!” Ian yelled while waving his fists wildly in the air.

“Yeah. I, uh, heard about that,” Lip shared reluctantly, scratching his eyebrow with his thumbnail.

Ian looked at his brother with shock and horror.

“Why the _fuck_ didn’t you tell me?!”

“Okay, to be fair, Amanda texted me this a few minutes ago, so we probably found out at the same time,” Lip said in an attempt to placate his raging brother.

Ian’s jaw twitched at the admission, still enraged that Lip hadn’t thought to text him the second Amanda told him, but he decided to address the situation later since matters he deemed more pressing were at hand.

“Why the fuck is he going on a date? At ten in the fucking morning? On a _Monday_?!” Ian implored with a shout, asking both the universe and his brother for any semblance of an answer.

Lip shrugged.

“Holy shit. Did I fuck up that bad?” Ian said in a gravely even manner, arms now hanging by his sides like soggy noodles.

“Well, uh,” Lip started cautiously, palms facing his brother as a way to contain him. “Maybe he’s… just… wanting to get his mind off things?”

“Off fucking what?! We didn’t even talk! He’s my fucking boyfriend; why the fuck is he going on a date?!” Ian shot back, voice once again climbing in volume and intensity as he gave hard stamps to the floor to accentuate the fire in his words.

“Well, go tell him that!” Lip said resolutely, gesturing outside as if the world were Ian’s oyster.

Ian blinked and followed Lip’s hand, staring outside at the bright white sky and a campus that Mickey Milkovich was likely on.

“You know what? Maybe I will,” Ian said, looking satisfied and oddly collected. He waltzed over to Lip’s mirror, smoothed out his hair, and began walking back towards the door. Right before Ian was about to exit the dorm room and continue his search for Mickey, Lip’s phone buzzed, and both men froze to give it their attention. Lip grabbed it from the nightstand and read his newest text.

“Amanda’s saying that people saw him at the café.”

Ian nodded and finally exited the room, feeling the flaming need of jealousy smoldering at the pit of his stomach, the sickly sensation creeping onto his abdomen and down his thighs, so potent and intoxicating and narrowing that it made him feel like he was going to vomit and stab the fucker he found across from Mickey with a dagger all at the same time. He was burning and his feet seemed heavy like lead, but his head felt lightweight, as if the only thing in it was a swarm of humming mosquitos—polar opposites in sensation threatening to pull him apart. He left the dorm building with a sharp, unwavering focus for the café, intent on retrieving what he should have never lost.

Once Lip was certain Ian was out of earshot, he exhaled a large sigh and looked out the window, waiting to see his brother start down the path towards the café.

“God, I really fucking hope I’m right,” Lip mumbled to himself.

* * *

Mickey was sitting in the café with his hands folded in his lap, twiddling his thumbs as he waited for the barista to make his iced caramel macchiato. The establishment was oddly empty for a Monday morning, and to add to the peculiar aura of campus, the patrons who were inside were watching him in a manner that was making him uncomfortable. The fleeting eye contact with the random people circling around him was causing his palms to sweat, so he kept darting his gaze between the random modern art prints on the walls, hoping and praying that Danny would make his belligerent entrance soon.

Thankfully, his calls into the void were answered because Danny hobbled into the café only a few minutes later. And, luckily, it was right as Mickey’s name was being called out by the barista, allowing him to stride over to the counter and scoop up Mickey’s coffee and carrot muffin. He tottered to join Mickey at the table, feet lifting off the ground in slow motion and looking at Mickey through stoned, half-lidded eyes. Despite how off the earth he seemed, he did have a wide, rather satisfied grin on his face as he approached the table, and Mickey was subconsciously nodding in awe of the situation materializing before him. He gingerly took the coffee and muffin from Danny’s hands.

“You good?” Mickey asked, watching as Danny slowly slid into the chair across from him.

“Never been better,” Danny replied, his voice low and gravelly with his syllables blended together. “Sup, man?” He extended his arm across the table. “My name’s Danny—wait, shit, you already knew that.” His body began bouncing from his throaty laughs.

“Yeah,” Mickey said, stretching out the word into a croak. He took the lid off his coffee and gave it a trepidatious sip. “So, uh, what’d you get up to last night?”

Danny suddenly deflated, irises just barely peeking out from between his lids as he stared off into the ether, his mind trying to piece together the fragments of the night prior. “I think… me and my buddies were hanging out.”

“Yeah?” Mickey said, leaning back in his chair with his coffee like a therapist listening to a client. “How was that? Were up pretty late. Don’t got class today?”

Danny’s chin dropped to his chest as his mind reconstructed reality. His lips parted and his brows knit together in contemplation. “I don’t think—”

The doors to the café violently flew open.

“ _Mickey!_ ”

Mickey jumped a little in his seat, splashing some coffee onto his jeans as he turned to the source of the noise: a seething redhead huffing and methodically scanning the room for him. When Ian saw him, he exhaled a sigh before quickly reverting back to being the man who had a flaming need to take back what was his. He marched over to the table, eyes impaling a dazed Danny.

“Ian?” Mickey uttered softly.

Ian stuck a finger in the stunned jock's face. “Danny Sutherland, why the _fuck_ are you on a date with _my_ boyfriend?”

Danny blinked between the two men, gob open wide in confusion. “Oh shit… what?”

Ian choked on his words and looked over at Mickey, who was gawking at the situation in astonishment. Just beyond Mickey, Ian could see the patrons also watching the scene with peeled eyes, half of them rooting for Ian to rip Danny’s skin off his bones and the other half terrified over what they expected to come next.

Ian blinked, but with Mickey still silently clutching his coffee, the jealous spark in him ignited again, and he was suddenly crowding Danny’s space even more than he was before.

“I’m gonna ask again,” he snarled. “What the fuck are you doing on a date with my boyfriend?”

Danny blinked lazily, the cloudiness in his mind momentarily abating for his instincts to tell him that he needed to run or else risk getting torn to shreds by Ian.

“Yo… I have no clue,” Danny answered. “I’m gonna head out.”

Ian nodded and lifted off from Danny’s space, allowing the man to slip out from the chair and stumble out of the café in a whirl, leaving everyone in the establishment to wonder if he even registered being there in the first place.

With a long exhale that attempted to cool the fire burning his cheeks, Ian finally felt his body slacken a bit, and he turned to look at Mickey.

“You mind if I sit down?” he asked, gesturing at the now vacant seat.

“You gonna rip my head off?” Mickey joked with a smile plucking up the corners of his mouth.

Ian chuckled and ran a hand through his hair, feeling the air of familiarity reappear between them, the space of the café feeling milder. The other customers who had been watching descended from their fervor, as well, slowly returning back to sipping their own drinks and covertly regarding the two men.

Ian cleared his throat. “So… you and Danny Sutherland?”

“Not really,” Mickey admitted with a laugh and sipped his coffee.

Ian blinked, apparently not expecting that to be the answer that fell from Mickey’s lips. “Are we not doing the going out thing anymore?”

“I wanna, but you didn’t sound like you were into it,” Mickey said while scratching at his temple.

“No,” Ian returned loudly, placing his hands down on the table and leaning over to get closer to Mickey. “That’s not it at all, Mick. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I guess it just didn’t occur to me that we were boyfriends, but in retrospect, we are. We really are. I was just having such a good time living with you and hanging out together that I wasn’t even thinking about labels.”

“You said we're just friends, though,” Mickey pointed out with a frown. “I threw that whole thing on Friday, and you didn’t even stop by.”

Ian jolted like he’d been kicked in the chest. “What? What do you mean I didn’t come by? I was there for, like, an hour looking for you.”

Mickey’s lips parted in shock, and he dropped his coffee cup down onto the table. “No fuckin’ way, man. I was waitin’ for two hours and didn’t see you anywhere. When did you come?”

“I wanna say around midnight? We got caught up trying to pick up Lucia’s friend Molly because Lucia’s other friend Kelly was breaking down about her ex-boyfriend, so I was late, but I came.”

Mickey’s jaw hung open a little wider as the revelation blanched his skin.

“Holy fuck,” Mickey whispered and rolled his eyes heavenward, realizing that his entire weekend of moping and believing that Ian didn’t want him had been in vain, especially considering that Ian was doing exactly the same thing in his dorm room whilst hounding his phone and waiting for Mickey’s text.

“Look, Mick,” Ian began, quickly taking one of Mickey’s hands into both his own. “I really really like you, and I shouldn’t have said that we were just friends because we’re obviously not. The dorm feels like shit without you there, and I wanna keep whatever we have going.”

Mickey looked down at how earnestly Ian’s hands clasped his, thumbs stroking his knuckles like they’d been separated for eons. Ian couldn’t help himself—there was something about how Mickey’s skin ran under his touch that had him feeling like he was floating, all the rage and sorrow of the weekend draining out of him only to be replaced with the fuzziness of contentment and adoration.

“What do you think about that? You wanna try being actual, official boyfriends?” Ian asked after some silence, green eyes glossy and pleading.

Mickey sat up and curled his free hand around Ian’s with a nod.

“Yeah,” he confirmed with a bright smile. “Let’s do that.”

For the first time in three days, both Ian and Mickey smiled so widely and genuinely that their cheeks hurt, and their grins only kept hitching higher when they remembered that the next morning, they would be waking up beside each other in bed once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this concludes part 2! part 3 will be a one shot or two lil chapters since we gotta celebrate the fact that they’re officially together, ya feel ;) also, in a similar vein: i think i've decided on this story being 4 parts total!


End file.
